It’s spring break, which means some folks are headed to Myrtle Beach. Some lounge around on the couch and watch a lot of TV. One teacher friend of mine curled up with a big stack of English papers and a green pen (yikes!). I traveled to southeastern Arizona for some quality time alone in the deserts and canyons.

Well, not alone exactly – I went to spend some time with the birds of the arid Southwest. April is a great time to visit. The weather was beautiful during my trip, mostly sunny with highs in the 70s to 80s depending on the elevation. I have to say that even though it is more pleasant temperature-wise in April, not all of my favorite birds are really back yet from their wintering grounds (I’m looking at you, Red-faced Warbler!). May, and even late July and early August score slightly higher on the cool bird index. Still, it was a great week here in Arizona.

Hummingbirds were a highlight. I’ve seen nine species, which isn’t too bad. A late summer visit can net you 12-15, depending on how many rare ones are about. The one pictured above is the aptly named Magnificent Hummingbird. Light refracts off of special feathers on its head and neck giving rise to amazing iridescence in the sunlight. Even in the shade, they can look pretty remarkable. The one below is a male Broad-billed Hummer.

While the deserts have a few specialty species, many hummingbirds are found at slightly higher elevations. I had some good hummingbird watching in Madera Canyon, Miller Canyon, and Ramsey Canyon. Speaking of the canyons, another one of my favorite canyon birds is the Acorn Woodpecker.

They look (and act) just like clowns. I love to watch their noisy antics. Acorn Woodpeckers are a fascinating species. They often live in loose colonies, and practice cooperative breeding strategies in which not only the two biological parents but also other members of the colony participate in raising the young. The colony also usually maintains a “granary tree” – which is a tree or snag that is used for storing copious numbers of acorns. A woodpecker drills a small hole, and then stuff a single acorn in so that it fits tightly. A granary tree many contain thousands of cached acorns.

While I was in Ramsey Canyon at the Nature Conservancy preserve there, I noticed that the next door Ramsey Canyon Inn is for sale.

I’m very happy as a teacher, but in my daydreams I think it would be awesome to cash in all my savings and run a birder’s B&B somewhere. It’s probably a ton of work, and not nearly as much fun as it seems in my dreams. But it gives me something nice to think about as I drift off to sleep here in my last night in Tucson.

Lest you think that my days were all filled with fun and frivolity, I want to set the record straight. Birding in Arizona is a highly perilous affair, with dangers lurking around every corner. Take for example, the sign I saw in Florida Canyon, south of Tucson:

I was lucky to escape with my life. And even luckier to see a pair of very rare Black-capped Gnatcatchers building a nest.

Despite finding most of the birds I was looking for this week, one particular Arizona species has been giving me trouble for years – and this trip started no differently. When you’ve been birding in Arizona as many times as I have, there aren’t many birds left to see here for the first time. But when I arrived, there was one on the rare bird alert that had managed to escape me during all of my previous trips: Rufous-backed Robin. These birds are quite uncommon, but there are usually multiple individuals sighted each year. They are most likely to appear in winter, however, and I usually visit in the spring and summer. Also, they can be very sneaky and skulky. I have looked for them on multiple occasions – perhaps 7 or 8 times in total. But they had always eluded me. These Robins are, in short, my nemesis bird.

The week before I left Seattle, I noticed that a particular Rufous-backed Robin had been hanging out at Catalina State Park for several months. Nemesis bird, prepare to meet your match! Actually, the Robin lived up to its nefarious reputation. I spent nearly four hours scouring its last known location on my first morning in Arizona, but it was a complete no show – and it hasn’t been seen since. Damn you, robin!

Then, last night, as I was deciding about what to do with my last full day in Arizona, I saw another report of a Rufous-backed Robin. This one was in Cienega Creek Preserve, a protected natural area just south of Tucson. I had never been there before, in part because a permit is required just to enter the preserve. I didn’t have a permit. But I found that you can apply for one online; three hours later, the completed permit was emailed to me. I was headed to Cienega!

The day dawned cool and cloudy. I parked at the Preserve’s dirt parking area about 20 minutes after sunrise. I placed a copy of my permit on the dashboard, and headed off down the trail. Cienega Creek Preserve is spectacular. The trail winds through a vibrant Sonoran desert scrub. I had to shuffle my feet to keep from stepping on several coveys of Gambel’s Quail as I was serenaded by Cactus Wrens and Bell’s Vireos. About two miles in, the trail entered an extensive stand of cottonwood trees, and the creek began to flow faster and deeper.

The cool air was scented with sage, cottonwood blossoms, and sweet petrichor. I arrived at the place where the Robin was last seen, and began to search. And search. And search some more. Then I took a break. And a walk. And had lunch. And searched some more. Suffice it to say that there were no robins on the trail this day. Part of me was pretty disappointed that my nemesis bird had again somehow escaped my grasp. But part of me was also deeply grateful that I keep missing these birds. If I hadn’t been tempted by the prospect of maybe meeting my nemesis, I never would have bothered applying for a permit to visit this unique and beautiful area. And I never would have gotten to know this special place. My nemesis taunts me, sure. But it also encourages me and inspires me, goads me on and fires my determination. So laugh, robins, laugh while you can. On my next visit, I’m going to hunt you down.

And thus ends this visit to Arizona. I don’t know exactly when, but I’ll be back in the not too distant future. There is always more to see.

It’s been almost a year since I posted to this blog, which kinda makes sense. I started it to chronicle my “really big year” of traveling to see birds and visit schools, a year that ended in June of 2013. I thought about whether I should “retire” this blog, or to keep using it to share new travels. When I returned to work full time in August of 2013, I vowed to reserve a little room in my busy life for the sort of adventures that occupied much of the 2012-2013 academic year for me. And so in that spirit, I have decided to keep using this blog from time to time, as the occasion arises. While I will not soon repeat the kind of Big Year that began for me two years ago, I hope to keep the spirit of inquiry and adventure that I kindled in myself that year alive, to make every year at least a little “big.”

It was in this frame of mind that I cashed in some frequent flyer miles for a short trip to Colorado. While I don’t consider myself to be the kind of birder obsessed with lists and “ticking off” the next lifer, I do enjoy seeing birds that I haven’t seen before. And I was also only four birds away from having seen 700 species in the ABA Area, a milestone of some note. I turn 40 in January, and it would be pretty cool (although perhaps not totally practical) to reach 700 by then. Also, my friend Neil Hayward keeps pestering me about getting to 700, so I guess there’s peer pressure too!

I flew into Denver on Wednesday morning, and headed northeast to the Pawnee National Grassland. This area is some of the best preserved remaining shortgrass prairie habitat in the United States.

Shortgrass prairie used to be fairly widespread on the western Great Plains. This habitat was shaped by relatively low rainfall and by the consistent grazing of abundant herds of American Bison. The loss of the bison, overgrazing by cattle, and human development have greatly reduced the quality and quantity of this kind of prairie in Colorado and elsewhere in the American West. Pawnee National Grassland is one place where you can still find vast swathes of unbroken shortgrass. Interestingly, it is administered by the US Forest Service, although Pawnee is nothing but a forest of grass.

And cacti.

And crazy, huge caterpillars.

However interesting the shortgrass prairie is in and of itself, I was here for the birds. And one bird specifically: McCown’s Longspur. This species breeds in a thin slice of shortgrass prairie from Alberta down through Montana, Wyoming, and northern Colorado, and it winters in northwest Texas. In other words, it’s not a particularly easy or convenient bird to see if you live outside the mountain west. And while you can find them somewhat reliably on their wintering grounds as skitterish flocks of drab grayish birds, I wanted to see them in their summer glory: the males in their full breeding plumage (black, white, and chestnut), singing, and doing their parachuting display flights over the prairie. So here I was in rural NE Colorado, with less than 40 hours to find the longspurs before my return flight to Seattle.

Driving along the few gravel roads that transect Pawnee, there was plenty to see. Lark Buntings, the state bird of Colorado, were incredibly abundant.

I saw probably 200 breeding pairs on territory in a day and a half. Horned Larks were also very common. I didn’t get any good pictures really showing how dramatic their “horns” can be – I guess that’s a job for another trip.

A real treat was finding a pair of Common Nighthawks sleeping on a rusty fence. These birds, a member of the goatsucker or nightjar family (I love those names!), are usually most active at dawn and dusk. These two were definitely snoozy.

After a few miles, in the distance, I thought I caught the jumbled song of a longspur! Trekking out into the prairie, I watched a lone male leap into the air and come fluttering down while singing his complex song. I wanted to stay a while and watch him, but the wind was whipping up, and over my left shoulder I could see a serious storm building.

Beating the rain and lightning back to the car, I vowed to come back early the next morning to get a better look.

I drove through the afternoon thunderstorm back to Fort Collins, where I had dinner at local institution that holds a special place in the hearts of chemistry teachers everywhere.

This being a birding post, I’ll spare you the significance of Avogadro’s number to the realm of the molecular sciences (but you can read about it on Wikipedia if you are really interested).

Serious birders are in the field at dawn during the spring and summer. And dawn was about 5:20am. So I dragged myself out of bed and raced for the prairie. After a bit of searching, I was rewarded with fantastic looks (and mediocre pictures) of about a dozen McCown’s Longspurs displaying, singing, foraging, and generally loafing about the prairie.

I spent the rest of the morning exploring more of Pawnee. Sparrows were a highlight, including this Grasshopper Sparrow who posed for me:

I also found this amazing short-horned lizard:

Some people call these critters “horned toads,” but they are reptiles and not amphibians. This guy was only about 2 inches long, and almost perfectly camouflaged amongst the rocks on the side of the road.

All too soon it was time to head back to Denver for my flight home. It was a very short trip, but I feel like I made the most of it. My big year lives on, at least in little ways.

I spent a lot of time over the past year driving from one place to another. Sometimes these excursions were short jaunts, but often they involved hours and hours of monotonous highway driving. Colima Warblers and Whooping Cranes, like many other cool birds, just don’t hang out close to major airports. To fill the mind-numbing void, I loaded up my iPod up with a ton of podcasts. The best of these episodes could help to turn a six hour trek across three states into a moderately enjoyable afternoon. After well over 200 hours of listening, here are my favorite podcasts for making the time fly, and also a few honorable mentions.

Overview: The granddaddy of narrative-based radio shows, it still delivers entertaining, thought-provoking, and high quality episodes every week – even after more than 500 episodes. The best stories are truly riveting and unforgettable: What happens when a sane person pretends to be crazy and gets committed to a mental institution? Are sliced hog rectums being sold as calamari? Does a found scrap of paper really contain the secret formula to Coca Cola? What happens when inmates at a high security prison stage Hamlet? Ira Glass and his team of reporters and producers find out.

Overview: Jad Abumrod and Robert Krulwich weave science and technology stories together with philosophy and observations about the human experience to make a fascinating hour-long podcast. This duo explores everything from randomness and coincidence to space and time to morality and mortality. Amazing soundscapes add to the listening experience.

Overview: Dumb name, incredible podcast. You might think that a podcast about economics would be boring, but this one is anything but. Recent episodes explore issues such as: Is it illegal to sell your old MP3s? Why is LeBron James underpaid, and why doesn’t he mind? What is a firefighter worth? Why didn’t the price of Coke change for 70 years? Most episodes are a bite-sized 20 minutes of so, and totally worth your time.

Suggested Episodes: Rocky Pipkin, Private Eye Vs. The Raisin Outlaw (#478), The Eddie Murphy Rule (#471), The Surprisingly Entertaining History Of The Income Tax (#356), The Hidden Digital Wealth In Your Pocket (#449), It’s Hard To Do Good (#460)

Overview: Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt collaborate on this informative and entertaining short-format podcast. Episodes vary in length, but most are in the 6 to 25 minute range, with some longer specials. A little zanier than Planet Money, but a nice complement to it. Recent episodes have explored topics such as: Who owns the words that come out of your mouth? Was Jane Austen a game theorist? Do baby girls cause divorce?

Suggested Episodes: The Upside of Quitting, Government Employees Gone Wild, How Much Does Your Name Matter, The Cobra Effect, The Days of Wine and Mouses

Overview: Roman Mars explores the hidden world of architecture and design in these short but polished podcasts. Why did early slot machines pretend to be vending machines? Were car makers the driving force behind criminalizing jaywalking? How did a simple circle and horizontal line painted on the hulls of ships save the lives of thousands of sailors? What special considerations must architects keep in mind when designing spaces for deaf people? Roman is your expert guide for these topics and more.

Suggested Episodes: Game Changer (#77), The Modern Moloch (#76), The Great Red Car Conspiracy (#70), Broken Window (#67), Razzle Dazzle (#65), The Best Beer in the World (#55), A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll (#33), Check Cashing Stores (#18)

Andrea Seabrook cuts through the spin and theatrics in our nation’s capital to take a clear-eyed view of our federal government and its politics. If you’re tired of political coverage which seems to have an agenda, try this one out for a change.

Want to know how to win a hockey face-off? Cook cicadas? Recruit a Russian double agent? Rescue a deer stuck on the ice? Take a portrait of the president? These guys can tell you. Light-hearted and fun without being dumb or silly.

A look at how the law and our legal system intersect our lives in mundane and extraordinary ways. My favorite episode so far is about jury nullification – when a jury acquits a defendant they believe to be guilty – and how and why this outcome is tolerated in our country.

Stories and interviews about everyday people doing interesting things. The quality is a bit uneven, with some terrific podcasts and some that are only so-so. Some episodes are not appropriate for children.

“How to win your dinner party” – a mix of food, culture, conversations, and advice. This is a recent addition to my podcast diet, but I have enjoyed the episodes I’ve heard so far.

So what makes a good podcast? I think there’s a strong element of storytelling in most of my favorites. They offer up some sort of intriguing premise: a mystery, a conflict, a counter-intuitive assertion, a question, a surprise. And then explore that premise providing details, spinning out a narrative, talking to experts, and/or discussing the outcomes. Snap Judgment provides this awesome flowchart for determining whether a submission is right for their show. It includes questions like:

Will your story make me laugh or cry?

Is there anything at stake?

Is there a conflict?

Are there compelling characters?

In addition to gathering good material, the best podcasts are tightly edited. They have a sense of tension, coherence, or densely packed content. There is no unnecessary talk, no lame airtime. Reflective pauses or breaks between stories are relatively short and covered by interesting music or sounds. Here’s a hint, podcasters – sitting around shooting the breeze with your buddies does not make for entertaining listening, no matter how clever you are or how famous your guests are. The care that goes into structuring and editing a well-produced podcast is obvious, and very much appreciated! If you want to learn about making a high quality, finely polished product check out anything by Roman Mars, Jad Abumrod, Ira Glass, Glynn Washington, Andrea Seabrook, or the Planet Money Team.

As a teacher, it also strikes me that most of these podcasts share many of the features of a good lesson: the topic is interesting or relevant, the audience is highly engaged, the content is memorable, examples/analogies/stories are used to elucidate the topic, important details are included, and humor is used appropriately and effectively.

The “newsworthy” media reports on the state of education in our country are largely discouraging. The articles I read in newspapers, magazines, and blogs often focus on failing schools, disappointing test results, or the tragic criminal behavior of a few isolated teachers or administrators. Acrimonious school board meetings make the news, as do research reports showing how American 4th graders are falling behind students in other parts of the world, especially in subjects like science and mathematics. If you take these snippets as representative of our educational system in the US, you could easily conclude that our young people are doomed.

But after spending some time during this last academic year visiting a wide variety of different schools, I have found the real picture to be much more complicated. Yes, there are problems – many of them large, pervasive, intractable problems. But there are also some reasons to feel grateful and even a few reasons to celebrate. And above all, there is reason to feel hopeful. Here’s why:

Teachers are Amazing

Granted, I set out to find some great teachers and great schools, not to fill out the Top Ten list for the Suckiest Teachers in America. Even so, my travels gave me plenty of opportunities to spend time in huge spectrum of schools (public and private, rural and urban and suburban, crushingly poor and fantastically wealthy). At most of the schools I visited I spent a whole school day, seeing a full range of teachers. What I saw was inspiring. These educators have a passion for teaching and care deeply about their students. They manage superhuman feats, among them:

Getting up at 4am every weekday to find time to prep for class, set up labs, or get those papers graded

Juggling classes of up to 40 teenagers at a time – not just managing the chaos, but engaging and inspiring them

Coaching, sponsoring clubs and activities, directing plays, doing dorm duty, counseling advisees, and generally providing a bounty of activities and support systems for students outside of class

Writing their own curricular materials and text books, even though they gain little or nothing financially from these endeavors

Using their own prior personal experiences as lawyers, historians, EMTs, park rangers, scientists, business executives, journalists, and soldiers to add to the educational experiences of students.

Engaging 9th graders in a collaborative cancer research project with students and professors at a local university

Meeting with students before school, through their lunch breaks, and after school – sometimes into the evening hours

Fighting NYC traffic – 90 minutes each way – just to make it back and forth to school

Spending their own money – often hundreds of dollars – to get supplies and materials to make lessons more interesting and more meaningful

Holding the rapt attention of a class for up to 90 minutes by telling stories and jokes that deliver the content in a compelling way (several groaned disappointedly when a student realized that class had actually ended a few minutes ago and they would have to leave).

Teachers are Innovative

Some education critics and pundits complain that teaching today looks much like it did 150 years ago, with teachers lecturing at the blackboard while students passively take notes. While this is a scene repeated in many classrooms across the country, I was surprised by the level of innovation and creativity teachers brought to the lessons I observed:

Exploring ‘flipped classroom’ techniques, POGIL, and the Harkness method to use classroom time and ‘homework time’ more effectively

Using Twitter and other social media to effectively communicate with their colleagues across the country, sharing ideas and scheduling massive online conversations about best practices

Developing “student-centered” lessons and curricula in which students take responsibility for their own learning and get to practice deeper level cognitive skills like critical thinking, planning, analysis, trouble-shooting, and evaluation.

Creating custom manipulatives and simulations that allow students to model complex systems and learn how they work

Using real world problems to create context and allow students to relate to the lesson – how would you go about designing a high performance skateboard? what architectural features of a house affect the rate of heat loss in the winter? what kind of drug delivery system would release chemotherapy drugs in the presence of cancerous cells but not healthy tissue?

Students Love Learning

If you believe the buzz about kids in the 21st Century, you might conclude that they are all technology-addicted, zero-attention-span brats with an over-developed sense of self-esteem and self-importance. While not all kids thrive in our schools, it was encouraging to see that the negative stereotypes of this generation are either over-simplified or just plain wrong.

Students love learning. When presented with an interesting and well-designed lesson, the vast majority of kids are willing to jump right in. While school doesn’t have to be “fun,” there’s no denying that learning can be enjoyable and engaging.

Students respond strongly to skilled and knowledgeable teachers who care about them. It was interesting to follow the transformation of a single student from a classroom with a talented, passionate teacher (3rd period) to a tired, less effective teacher (4th period). The student’s engagement and performance changed by orders of magnitude.

The harder the problem, the harder they try (at least up to a point). As any video game designer can tell you, challenging activities can be really fun. Lessons that push students to the limits of their capabilities while still allowing them to experience some success and a sense of accomplishment can be highly effective learning environments.

Students care about each other and the broader world. More than any generation before them, students are attuned to global issues and want to do something to make the world a better place. They talk about international human rights, climate change, and disaster relief. They join clubs and organizations, volunteer their time, and raise money. And many of them are planning careers that hope to address some of the great problems of our modern age.

Resources Matter

While I found some very effective teachers and highly motivated students in every school I visited, it was also shocking to see the enormous disparity between well-funded schools and those that were sorely lacking in resources. In one weekend I went from a school with lavish classrooms and labs, an average class size of about 10 students, and an endowment of nearly $1 million PER STUDENT to a school without books or basic supplies, classes of 35+, and a building that hadn’t been renovated in 60 years. While there was some good teaching happening in both places, the challenges faced by the students and teachers at the second school were extraordinary. It’s hard to teach chemistry without equipment and supplies, without books and computers, and without classroom and lab spaces big enough to adequately accommodate all of your kids.

After seeing some of these schools, it makes me sick to hear the pundits on TV saying things like “throwing money at the problem won’t fix the problems with our schools.” Some of these political hacks think that they are suddenly educational experts, perhaps because they once spent time in a classroom. Their diagnosis: bad teachers. Their prescription: more teacher accountability, more student testing, and less government interference. My response? They are clueless idiots. OF COURSE throwing money at the problem is the solution. Let’s imagine some other scenarios outside the realm of education, shall we?

***

Doctor: Chief, patient care is suffering. Our MRI is broken, and the X-ray machine needs to be recalibrated. Also, if we got some new lab equipment, we could run more sophisticated blood tests to better diagnose disease.

Hospital Exec: Why is it all about technology these days? Back when I was a doctor, we didn’t even have MRIs. Being a good doctor isn’t about having fancy tech toys to play with – those things are expensive, and I’m not sure we need them.

***

Engineer: We can’t seem to find and retain highly skilled engineers for the new NASA project. Maybe we should think about increasing pay and benefits?

Project Manager: Engineers are overpaid as it is. The problem is that they are lazy and poorly trained. Why would you pay engineers more if they are not doing a good job? What we need is more effective college engineering programs to prepare future engineers better.

***

Researcher: Boss, we have no new pharmaceuticals in development. Once our other patents expire, we’re sure to lose market share. Maybe we should spend some money on research & development?

Pharma Exec: Throwing money at the problem is not going to help. Instead of spending MORE money on R&D, we just need to spend it in SMARTER ways. We need to think outside the box – maybe we should just test our current drugs more extensively?

***

In most other professional endeavors, providing money for competitive salaries and paying for basic materials is a no-brainer if you want to achieve quality outcomes. Why should education be any different?

While there are courageous doctors who accomplish noble things in areas of the world without diagnostic equipment and proper medical supplies, they are hampered by the lack of appropriate resources. Imagine how much more good they could do with a little technological and human support. Likewise, teachers in poor schools are able to accomplish some incredible work with little or no money. But their efforts could be greatly amplified if they only had access to decent teaching resources. And if we want to attract and (more importantly) retain talented teachers, we’ll have to actually pay them a competitive salary (unlike, say, the $36K we pay Washington teachers with a BA and 5 years of experience – per http://www.k12.wa.us/safs/pub/per/salallocschedule.pdf). That is not even a living wage in Seattle, and other professionals with similar amounts of training and experience make double or triple that amount (see for example http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Engineer&l1=Seattle%2C+WA).

While teachers in more wealthy schools have many more options for putting together effective lessons for their kids, most of them work just as many hours as teachers in poor schools – and often for the same pay. Most of the teachers at the prestigious boarding schools I visited are required to live in the dorms, and regularly work 80+ hours a week for a surprisingly small salary. Like their teaching colleagues elsewhere, they do it because they love their jobs, feel that their work is meaningful, and honestly enjoy working with young people.

Looking back on my year, it is all of the teachers that I have met that make me feel hopeful and inspired. They are smart, hard working, and courageous. They often make sacrifices of time and money in their own lives because they believe that educating the next generation is critically important. Teachers of America, your passion and dedication is amazing. Your students love and appreciate you. And you are making a difference in their lives, and in the future of our country and our world.

Amongst those strange souls who are wild bird enthusiastists, there are bird watchers, and then there are birders. I often describe myself as a “bird watcher” because that describes my hobby in the most simple terms. I go outside, I find birds, I watch birds. Bird watchers enjoy birds on an aesthetic level, and are often keen to understand their behavior and natural history. I also like the term “bird watching” because it is less opaque that the rather bizarre term “birding.” In the past when I have mentioned to acquaintances that I spent the weekend birding, on more than one occasion I have been asked what kind of shotgun I have, or how many pheasants I bagged. After all, if you met some guy at the beach who claimed to be “fishing” with binoculars (but without a rod and reel or a net), you might wonder if he’d lost his marbles.

Birders are similar in many ways to bird watchers, but the term ‘birder’ usually connotes someone who is more serious about certain aspects of the hobby, particularly identification and keeping various kinds of lists. Birders are more likely to consider their passion for birds beyond the realm of merely a hobby. If you hear someone at a hawk watch debating the gender and age of a soaring raptor a mile away, or a person out on the mudflats discussing the exact parentage of an immature hybrid gull, you are probably listening to self-described birders. They might travel extensively, hoping to add a never-before-seen species to their ‘life list.’ Birders are also more likely to do various flavors of Big Days or Big Years, in which they attempt to find as many birds as possible within a certain geographic area in a specified span of time. As someone who has just completed a Big Year spanning the continental United States and Canada, I’m a birder too.

Essentially, birders have taken bird watching and converted it into a game. And what a game it is. If you think football is impressive with its 100 yard field and hundred-man teams, or think a five day cricket test match is something, you have never really pondered the epic scope of a North American birding Big Year. The ‘field of play’ is nearly 8,000,000,000 square miles and spans from the Florida Keys (24° N latitude) to Ellesmere Island, Canada (83° N latitude) and from Newfoundland (52° W longitude) to the end of the Aleutians (179° W longitude). There are 20 billion players in this game, perhaps 50,000 human teammates (or competitors?) and billions and billions of sparrows, hawks, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, loons, and warblers who don’t care a whit about playing a game with people but are nevertheless the star participants. The game lasts 365 days in a row (the length of 2920 football games, at three hours each, played back-to-back).

Some of these birds are relatively easy to find, like Surf Scoter or Rough-legged Hawk:

Some of them require going to a specific place at a specific time, like Whooping Crane (Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas) and Rufous-capped Warbler (Florida Canyon in Arizona).

Some are so rare that even within this vast playing field that you can’t really count on them to show up at any specific location, like Crimson-collared Grosbeak or Barnacle Goose. You just have to ‘chase’ them if and when they show up.

The rules of this game are pretty simple: find and ID as many birds as you can in the prescribed geographic area within the time limit. The birds have to be alive, wild, and unrestrained when they are seen. No dead birds. No pet shops. No eggs (?!). Oh, and you have to engage in ethical behavior while you’re watching them (no harassing or killing birds, no trespassing, no disturbing endangered species, etc.). Other than that, you can pursue the game any way you like. Want to rent a helicopter? Or limit yourself to species seen on foot, bike, or kayak? No problem. Want to bring a friend or hire a guide? Ok. Want to count birds you ID-ed by song or call, but didn’t actually see? Totally fine. All of these variations are sanctioned by the American Birding Association. Of course, you can also ignore the ABA completely and make up your own set of rules. As birders say, “it’s YOUR list” – meaning, you can play whatever game you want to.

Beyond the epic scope of a Big Year, the things that make it fun are the many challenges. Just finding a particular species can be tough. Can you pick out the rare Eurasian Widgeon from a huge flock of American Wigeon? Do you know where to go to find the tame but often maddeningly elusive Spruce Grouse? Will you actually see that secretive rail or sparrow out in the endless expanse of saltmarsh? And then there is the challenge of identifying some birds. There are 11 species of flycatchers in the genus Empidonax, many of which are almost identical except for the tiniest differences in physical structure and plumage. Some birds can only reliably differentiated by voice. Others show important but subtle ID clues in flight. Still others are best identified by a combination of range, habitat, and/or behavior.

And what you do “win” if you play this game? Mostly a batch of enjoyable memories, a sense of accomplishment, and perhaps the thrill of discovering something new. There are no cash prizes, no trophies, no fame for the “winners” – perhaps just a little recognition and admiration from the tiny fraction of the overall population that claims to be serious birders. People often ask me how birding is “refereed” – how do you know that a birder has seen the birds that he or she claims to have seen? The short answer is that birders operate on the honor system. There are very few “cheaters” for the same reason that so few people cheat running marathons, or climbing mountains. Sure, there are always a few people willing to take the subway, but most people run marathons for the sense of accomplishment. They do it to get in shape, to push themselves, to join a community of runners, to add meaning to their lives. Cheating would defeat the purpose.

Spending this past year playing my own version of a birding game while simultaneously visiting a large number of schools has lead me to think about the ‘gamification’ movement in education. Evolutionary biologists tell us that the origin of play and games in many species may be an adaptive response to make learning new skills fun. Lion cubs might play with each other to hone their hunting skills, while human cubs engage in games to sharpen their athletic prowess, intellect, or social skills. Teachers look to capitalize on this natural fit between learning and games in their classrooms. Games may help to motivate students to practice skills or gain knowledge, hoping to accumulate prizes or “level up” – or just because the act of playing is fun. Playful learning can foster collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. Many games allow students to model the real world, and let them interact with this model in authentic and compelling ways. Simulations can teach students cause and effect relationships, arm them with new strategies or tactics, or simply provide them with different perspectives or new points of view.

Of course gamification is not a panacea for all of our educational ills. And it can be done poorly. If the game becomes disconnected from meaningful learning experiences, it ceases to be a valuable education tool. Some birders get so wrapped up in the game of birding that they also begin to disconnect from the other meaningful aspects of their hobby. I’ve seen a few birders who will drive eight hours straight to see a new bird, watch it for all of 5 seconds, tick it off their list, and hop back in the car. Gone are an aesthetic appreciation of the creature, a curiosity about its behavior and natural history, and a sense of wonder and connection with our world. For these reasons, I try to remind myself that I am a bird watcher and not just a birder. And when I go back to teaching this fall I will embrace fun and games with my students, but I will also remember that games by themselves cannot replace wonder, curiosity, and a passion for understanding our world.

My Big Year is over. What began at Falls Creek State Natural Area in Minnesota on June 13, 2012 ended at my house in Washington state on June 12, 2013. My official tally is 647 species of birds – a few short of my goal of 650 (I was hoping to add about five species on my cancelled trip to Gambell). But this was the only possible measure by which my year fell short. In all other ways, it exceeded my hopes and expectations. I will be writing more about my thoughts and observations about the year in general later on this summer, but for now here is my Alaska wrap-up report.

Miles by car: 1802

Miles by bus (Denali): 95

Miles by boat (multiple trips): 30

Miles by foot: 25

Number of new Big Year birds seen: 23

Total species seen: 123

Number of moose I had to swerve to avoid on a four-lane road 5 minutes from the Anchorage airport: 1

Reason I did not get a picture of the coolest mammal: I was too busy sitting there with my mouth open, thinking “That is the most ENORMOUS bobcat I’ve ever seen!”

Coolest birds: Tie between Willow Ptarmigan:

Bluethroat (photos by Neil Hayward):

And Long-tailed Jaeger (photo by Neil Hayward):

Rarest bird: White Wagtail (photo by Neil Hayward)

Bird that I have a new appreciation for: Red-throated Loon (photo by Neil Hayward)

In Washington we mostly see them while they are in their winter basic plumage, so it was a treat to get to see them in all of their high breeding splendor.

Coolest Experience: Visiting the many seabird breeding colonies around Seward and Homer by boat, getting very close to thousands of nesting puffins, murres, and kittiwakes. Here is a quick video I took of Gull Island near Homer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8sUJIJgwy4.

Quirkiest Town: Nome

There aren’t many towns in the U.S. with abandoned railway cars sinking into the tundra, a combo Subway/movie theater, and a caribou named Velvet who rides around in the back of a pickup.

On the whole, Alaska was an amazing experience. I will definitely be back!

Coming soon, a post that attempts to answer the question many people have asked me recently: ‘After visiting all of those great schools and interesting teachers throughout the U.S., what did you learn about the state of education/effective schools/good teaching?’

The plan was to spend the last three days of my Big Year in Gambell, a tiny Yupik community on the very northwest tip of St. Lawrence Island. It’s the bit of North American land that is closest to Siberia, only 46 miles away. On a clear day, you really can see Russia from your house. Even when visibility is less than perfect, you can see tomorrow. The International Date Line is only 23 miles distant. I wanted to go to Gambell. I wanted to see tomorrow. I wanted to see the millions of sea birds that are said to fly by the sea watch there. I wanted to know what Siberia strays would get blown across the strait. I wanted to see how people live in that tiny corner of our world.

But in order to get to Gambell, you need to take a tiny plane from a company like Bering Air. But Bering Air doesn’t fly when the weather is bad, and lately it hasn’t been too pretty in Nome. As warmer air blows in from the south, it hits the pack ice and cools, creating thick fog. Thick fog means no flights to Gambell.

I went to the airport on Sunday morning. The weather was marginal in Nome, but Gambell was completely socked in. The flight was delayed. And then delayed some more. I updated my blog, and waited. More reports came in. The weather was still bad. This was frustrating. There wasn’t much to do in the small one room waiting area.

Then, miraculously, the weather in Gambell improved enough to maybe land a plane. But in the meantime, the fog in Nome got worse, and now the plane couldn’t take off. We waited some more. Eventually, the flight was canceled. I was stuck in Nome. I scrambled to find a hotel room for my unexpected stay – there was one room at the Aurora Inn. I was told that maybe we could go tomorrow.

It was still only 5pm, so I wandered the streets of town.

I stopped by the combination Subway/movie theater. I’m betting it’s the only Subway in the world that has a movie theater inside of it.

The new Star Trek movie was playing – I could tell by the Nome-style movie poster.

I bought a ticket. The theater itself was small, but really nice. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit.

Early the next morning, it was still foggy – but… was it my imagination? Was it a tiny bit less foggy? I went to the airport. It was my imagination. The flight was delayed, and then delayed again. Then, Nome got less foggy. A flight to Savoonga actually left. Gambell was marginal. We might go. Then the fog rolled in again, and the flight was canceled. Maybe we would go at 4pm this afternoon.

I caught a ride into town, and toured Nome. I went to the Nome museum, and learned about the native people who have lived in western Alaska for thousands of years.

I learned that Wyatt Earp actually travelled from Arizona to Nome during the gold rush of 1900. He opened a saloon here, and sold supplies to the prospectors for two years before heading back to the Southwest with a load of cash.

I also learned about dog sledding. Alaskans take their dog sledding very seriously. Nome is the official ending point for the Iditarod Dog Sled Race.

I ate lunch at the Bering Sea BAR (and restaurant).

I admired the fact that at 65 degrees north latitude you can mount solar panels on the SIDE of a building.

I even went inside a store that sells real things.

I did not go inside this bar.

After a while, I took a cab back to the airport. At this point, I have taken both cabs in Nome at least three times each. Bering Air is still on weather hold. I wait in the tiny room for news. Then the news comes. The flight is canceled. Maybe it will go tomorrow, but the weather forecast is the same as today (and yesterday). I call my wife to discuss options, and listen to her calm and thoughtful words over the loud and crackling static. She is very supportive of anything I want to do. I have now wasted two of my original three days scheduled for Gambell. I don’t know when I will be able to get there. And more importantly, I don’t know when I could fly back. Bering Air has canceled the last five flights to Gambell, and no one has gotten on or off the island in almost three days. I don’t want to be stuck there, especially since there are no restaurants and almost no places to buy food or supplies. I am frustrated and discouraged. I call Alaska Airlines and get reservations for the next flight back to Seattle, which is tomorrow. I call Bering Air and tell them to take my name off my list for the morning Gambell flight attempt, and they start processing my refund.

I walk home through the fog, a bit sad. I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to try to go to Gambell again. This was supposed to be the grand finale of my Big Year, and instead it was a grand letdown. After several attempts, I finally find a place to stay the night – at the Nugget Inn, and I begin to walk to the hotel through the dense fog and the surreal eternal daylight of summer Nome. The evening is calm, the air is cold, and the gulls stare back at me from their perch on a small iceberg just offshore.

As I walk, I begin to think of the fog as a metaphor, both for my Big Year and for my life. Fog can be frustrating – you think you can see a bit of the future up ahead, but it is hazy and uncertain. Many times you just want to look across the strait and see tomorrow clearly – it seems so close – only 23 miles! Sometimes you think you have things figured out, you think you know what’s coming – but then out of the mist comes an unexpected surprise, an unplanned wrinkle, an unforeseen detour. Often these surprises that appear out of the fog are unwelcome, annoying, or even painful. But occasionally out of the fog comes something wonderful: a kind new friend, a delightful new experience, a marvelous new view of the world that you weren’t expecting. The fog helps to keep life mysterious and exciting, full of wonder and anticipation and novelty.

When I started my Big Year last June, I had some idea of what was in store, but so much was unknown. I stared into the fog and tried to make out the landscape ahead. But hidden behind a veil were a great deal of things I just couldn’t predict. Many of them were wonderful surprises: bonding with my wife over two White-tailed Ptarmigan chases up Mt. Rainier, meeting amazing teachers at Bronx Science and Groton in the same week and becoming inspired by their shared passion and their different paths to educational excellence, seeing the amazing seascape of the Dry Tortugas and hearing Wes Biggs tell unforgettable (and hysterical) stories, watching master teacher Bill Palmer do extraordinary things with very ordinary resources, showing up in Massachusetts just in time to see mega-rare Northern Lapwing and Little Egret and enjoy a spectacular burst of late fall radiance on Cape Cod, and experiencing an extraordinary four days exploring the sea and tundra around Nome with my instant new friends Neil, Abe, and Joe. I was graced with all of these surprise gifts appearing out of the fog, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to spend a whole year stumbling my way through this undiscovered country and uncovering unexpected wonders. If it weren’t for the uncertainty of the fog, there are many experiences I probably would have skipped, and my year would have been immeasurably poorer (and I’d have fewer embarrassing and funny stories to tell).

When I got back to the Nugget, I was still a bit disappointed to be missing out on Gambell, but I had a new appreciation for the fog. My friend and mentor, Than Healy, believes that metaphors can help us make sense of our lives and our experiences. I will try to embrace both the literal and metaphorical fog in my life, and appreciate the mystery and majesty that it brings. Even though I often tell myself that I hate surprises, the wonderful little surprises of my Big Year are what made it special. There will be another time to visit Gambell, but for now the last surprise of the year is for my kids: Daddy is coming home a little early.